fix lead lines

Don't know about "straightening the out" but you can improve the "ICKY" without heat, depends on how exasperated you are, of course.

As a practice piece that you are tired of practicing on, when you clean it use whiting and a wet/damp rag,,dip the wet rag in a small container of whiting and scrub, with the lines and across them. Don't go crazy, just rub. You sill improve the look of any lead line by doing this and it cleans the glass also. Throw in a little baking soda in the whiting and you can help neutralize the flux at the same time.

That is a "fix it", absolutely nothing works like practice and experience.

If you are using opal glasses that you don't have to worry about slight scratches, you can use a well worn green scrub pad too, but only after you have cleaned the sink and several dozen pans with it, got to be really soft..

That may not be a bad idea. I should have done a practice panel before doing a birthday present :) Most of the lines didn't turn out too bad; I'll just slow down and redo some of them. Because of gaps that I neglected to fix, some of the lines look way too big. Oh well . . .

Thanks for the reply. Ryan

Michele Blank wrote:

Whiting? I've never used that before . . . thanks for the tip. I'll have to give that a try.

Thanks again! Ryan

Artistic license?

Hello, I am fairly new to stained glass and I haven't heard about Whiting. What is it? Where can I get it? Thanks, Little Bit

Where do you get the rest of you glass supplies, should be right near the "cement" it cleans up after teh "cementing process".

Whiting is nothing more than chalk dust. Yes, you can get it at a glass supply store for ??? bucks/pound, but you can also get it as the chalk dust used for marking play fields for the same price /10 pounds. Or you could possibly find it in the building section of a "Home Supply" store (Lowes or Home Depot) for a few bucks for a 50 pound bag. Look for ordinary, plain, chalk dust.

It's the same situation as "tape head cleaner" back when everyone had cassette tape players. You could buy a one ounce bottle of cleaner for 3 bucks, but if you bought a 12 ounce bottle of rubbing alcohol, you would have

12 times as much of the exact same substance for less than a buck -- unless you wanted the lovely blue colored alcohol.

Just adding my two cents (because it isn't worth 20.)

Javahut wrote:

Call your local park board or school athletic dept. Ask them where they buy their bags of "chalk". I buy it in 50 lb bags for less than $3.00. I've never seen it in HD or Lowes, but doesn't mean they don't have it. The "real name" is Calcium Carbonate.